Online applications are proliferating as the Internet evolves. For instance, various collaborative applications are now widely used enabling large numbers of users from anywhere to work on a project, meeting, and the like. For example, exemplary collaboration types include Microsoft Sharepoint (available from Microsoft Corp.), LiveMeeting (available from Microsoft Corp.), wiki technologies such as wikipedia.org, gotomeeting.com (available from Citrix Online LLC), and the like. This online collaboration allows users to instantly share documents, calendars, notes, video, audio, etc. from anywhere. Advantageously, online collaboration provides productivity improvements, organizational synergy, and the like. Unfortunately, there are problems associated with existing collaboration techniques such as identity verification, security, privacy, proof of delivery, spam, viruses, and other harmful malware. Also, existing collaboration techniques use the “very public and very vulnerable” Internet as their worldwide network. The challenge is how to collaborate with users and determine the legitimacy or know the true intentions of the users in the world of the “Unvetted Public Internet”.
Users worry and wonder if what they collaborate on gets to the right location or to the intended person, especially when exchanging important (e.g., confidential), high-value messages and files. When the user hits the “send” button they are not certain that their message is secure, private, or if it gets to their named recipient or falls into the hands of an unintended recipient. Many emails never get to their intended recipient (for a variety of reasons) and that both the sender and recipient are never notified of that fact? In addition, if proof of delivery is important, how can senders prove the email got to the right location, the intended recipient and whether it was viewed and/or downloaded by the correct person? Or, might it have gone to, or been intercepted by, someone maliciously pretending to be the recipient? Or, might the recipient say they never received it when they actually did? All it takes these days in most everyday systems is to know someone's User ID and password and they can wreak havoc in their personal or professional lives, or even cause the demise of a publicly traded company if insider information is stolen or intercepted by those not intended to see such confidential information. For more sophisticated intruders, many other tools and techniques are available to intercept and disrupt a supposedly-private communication.